There has been a lot of research on humor. Some research proposed that nothing is really 'funny' however, what we call funny is actually irony...

There is even a formula to induce laughter !! Put two scenes into the mind of your audience AT THE SAME TIME: one, a normal boring scene of an event, and then the same scene in an impossible, unrealistic way...

The problem is that only half of the audience will suspend reality, and then they become offended by the unrealistic part of the joke...

So, like politics, you can only win half the audience at any one time...My theory is that politicians who get elected, for example, Sarah Palin as Governor of Alaska, are actually highly skilled at perfecting humor...

I googled this example of my theory from http://www.short-funny.com/
'...My dog used to chase people on a bike a lot. It got so bad, finally I had to take his bike away...'

Since I am a scientist, my favorite joke is: Heisenberg went out for a drive in his car. A policeman stopped him and asked if Heisenberg knew how fast he was going. Heisenberg says, "No, but I know where I am.'

for nonscientists:

What is Heisenberg most famous for?
He developed new theories in quantum mechanics about the behavior of electrons which agreed with the results of previous experiments. Heisenberg is most famous for his "uncertainty principle", which explains the impossibility of knowing exactly where something is and how fast it is moving.
Werner Heisenberg - Windows to the Universe https://www.windows2universe.org/people ... nberg.html

for scientists: During my coursework in Organic Chemistry, my lab instructor, Mr Chakrabarthy, in a beautiful Indian accent, gave this warning to all his new students:

'If you douze yourself with the ee-ther, aa-nd you set yourself on fi-ire, we will have to sit here ... and watch you burn'

When my daughter was about two years old, in the early 1970s, the economy was bad in our area, and if she wanted to buy something, I would often say, 'For the time being, we can't buy it.' Then she asked me, 'Well where do these time beans come from ?'

how many evolutionary scientists does it take to change a light bulb ?? none, the light bulb changes itself, but it takes ten million years

'...The adage "laughter is the best medicine" is no joke. A pilot study conducted at UCLA found that children and adolescents who watched humorous videos while their hands were soaking in frigid water were better able to tolerate the pain.

Another study attributed the effects of laughter on the release of endorphins, nature's own analgesic...'

'...While laughter won't shrink your tumor or make your carotid artery stop gushing, it does increase your ability to tolerate pain. It's not just because the laughter distracts you from the knife in your chest, the act of laughing releases endorphins, the body's natural pain killers. You will physically feel less pain if you can make yourself laugh...'